Fuel on Fire

Kill Rock Stars;
2006

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The Old Haunts are a guitar-based indie rock band. From Washington State. With a yowly-voiced singer. Technically, we shouldn't be able to pick the group out of a lineup if they'd mugged us. But the Old Haunts aren't completely indistinguishable from all the rest. While they take cues from common influences-- a bit from hardcore, a bit more from 80s college rock, a pinch from early-90s alternative and late-90s indie-- they take very different cues from these sources, emphasizing moody tension over catchy drama.

The band has developed their sound over three years and three EPs, which in 2005 were collected on disk as Fallow Field, a hit-or-miss assemblage that showed them toying and tinkering with their approach as they ran through a succession of drummers. The band's first proper full-length, Fuel on Fire, introduces a fourth drummer, Curtis James, whose pounding anchors the band's scrappy swamp-punk assault. Once again, Craig Extine pits his guitar against Scott Seckington's bass (which sounds like another guitar most of the time) in a "Beat It"-style knife fight. Their noise bursts forth suddenly on "Death on the Sickbed", creating an intense finale, and simmers tensely on "Wasted Day", as if likely to explode at any moment. On a few songs, Seckington brings in a piano or organ to referee, but generally the spare, elemental sound bolsters the album's testy paranoia and Extine's eloquent disaffection. His lyrics balance a gut-reaction disgust at the world with a precarious optimism. He's too outraged to stand idly by and watch the world destroy itself, but his anxieties prevent action. This insoluble conflict instills Fuel on Fire with a prickly rage that makes those guitars sound even more menacing.

So Fuel on Fire represents a great stride for the Old Haunts, even if it sounds limited. Especially on the second half, the tracks begin to bleed into one another, with the same sparring guitars and the same spastic drumming. Partly this is because Extine seems to write only verses-- choruses are absent and bridges exceptionally rare on these songs-- and partly because the niche the band carved for itself proves too small and cramped. While it considerably lessens the songs' impact, this strict consistency is mostly a minor flaw on an otherwise distinguished album.